The new fiscal year budget was published on the TCC website Sept. 18, nearly a month after it was approved.
According to one media law expert, the delay may have broken state law.
Public colleges like TCC are bound by Texas Government Code 551.043, which was updated in September 2025 by House Bill 1522. The law states that a physical copy of the proposed budget must be provided with the meeting notice at least three days before the scheduled board meeting, unless the college makes the proposed budget clearly accessible on the home page of their website.
Vice Chancellor for Communications and External Affairs Reginald Gates said that budget information has been available to the public since being presented at the Aug. 6 special meeting.
“The information was presented again at the August 13th Work Session of the Board of Trustees,” Gates said in a Sept. 21 email. “It was presented and approved at the August 20th Board of Trustees Monthly Meeting. All meetings and of the Tarrant County College Board of Trustees are duly posted on the TCC website.”
Chief Financial Officer Pamela Anglin provided a six-page document showing a general overview of revenue, expenditures and fund transfers when asked for a copy of the complete budget Sept. 10, but it did not include information for specific departments.
She said it had not been published on the website yet due to “accessibility remediation being done.” Accessibility remediation is the process of making digital content accessible to those with disabilities.
However, Student Press Law Center senior legal counsel Mike Hiestand said that’s not an excuse to ignore the law. The SPLC is a nonprofit organization that provides legal counsel to student media programs.
“An adopted government budget is public information under Texas law,” Hiestand said. “There is no exception that allows a governmental body to withhold it because it hasn’t been formatted to meet web accessibility standards. If the budget exists, the public has a right to see it.”
At the Sept. 10 board meeting, Gates said that because the property tax increase had not been finalized, the budget needed adjustment before being posted online.
Neither the budget provided to The Collegian by Anglin nor the proposed budget documents presented before the board vote included individual campus or department budgets. Anglin said The Collegian would need to file an open records request for specific line items.
Hiestand said the general budget overview that was provided might not satisfy the requirements of the law.
“If TCC adopted its budget on Aug. 20 without making it available to the public, that raises serious questions about whether the board complied with the Open Meetings Act,” Hiestand said.
